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Boeing machinist Scott Green, with his three-year-old son Joshua on his shoulders, walks the picket line outside Boeing's plant in Everett, Wa., on September 6, 2008. (Photo Robert Giroux/Getty Images)

Speaking yesterday on Meet the Press, Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)said that "the Obama system of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is basically breaking the law to try to punish Boeing and to threaten every right-to-work state."

While Meet the Press host David Gregory vigorously challanged Newt Ginrgrich on details of his personal life, he failed to challenge Gingrich on his false assertion that the NLRB was breaking the law by finding that Boeing punished workers for striking in Washington state by moving a planned new production line there to nonunion South Carolina. Despite the NLRB complaint against Boeing being one of the most high-profile NLRB cases in decades and entirely consistent with past legal precedent, Gregory failed to say anything.

His decision not to challenge Gingrich on the Boeing case is especially troubling since the main sponsor of Meet the Press is none other than Boeing. The top of Meet the Press'website proudly boasts that the show is "sponsored by Boeing."No other corporation is listed so prominently as a sponsor on the website. In addition, Boeing is the exclusive sponsor of Meet the Press' the iPhone app.

By not challenging Gingrich’s outrageously false assertion that the NLRB is acting illegally by demanding that the company move production, Gregory did not do his duty as a journalist and allowed his audience to believe that the NLRB was indeed acting illegally. This is simply untrue.

Indeed, many legal scholars have said that the complaint brought against Boeing is entirely legal. For those unfamiliar with the Boeing Case, the whole controversy started when Boeing decided to not open a planned production line at a union facility in Puget Sound after workers went on strike in 2008. In 2007, Boeing announced it would create a second production line to produce three 787 Dreamliner planes a month in the Puget Sound, in addition to the production that was already occurring in Puget Sound.

Then in October 2009, it was announced the company would move the second production line to a nonunion plant in South Carolina. Later, a Boeing official told the Seattle Times that Boeing moved the plant because of the strike and the union presence in Puget Sound.

Last month, NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon ruled that the decision to move production to a nonunion facility after a strike violates the ability to strike and collectively bargain enshrined in the National Labor Relations Act. This ruling stands in precedent with a long history of legal cases showing that threatening to move facilities if workers strike is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act.

Labor law professor James J. Brudney, the Newton D. Baker-Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law recently told Media Matters, "Relocating work away from a plant because of too much lawful union activity would be a classic violation of 8(a)(3)" of the National Labor Relations Act, which makes it illegal for employers "to discriminat[e] in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization."

The 1965 Supreme Court case of Textile Workers Union v. Darlington Manufacturing established that a company could not partially close a factory and move work elsewhere in order to punish a union. Doing so was illegal under this Supreme Court precedent.

Thus Gregory's decision not to challenge Gingrich’s lie about the Boeing ruling was journalistic malpractice. Gregory should have on labor law experts to discuss the NLRB case next Sunday in order to show that his decision not to challenge Gingrich’s false claim about the NLRB was not influenced by Boeing’s sponsorship of Meet the Press.

Mike, check out an article I wrote about Boeing this morning on PolicyMic.
http://www.policymic.com/beta/business-economy/politics-are-undermining-workers’-rights-and-sacrifices
- AdilPosted by Adil Ahmed on 2011-05-16 22:10:08

Gregory might have asked about the statement since it was mentioned, but to suggest it was flawed journalism is ridiculous, since the NLRB position is nowhere as clear as this article suggests. In fact, the article commits an error in saying a Boeing exec said the move was because of the strike; he did not. He said the move was because the Company cannot afford to have labor disruptions every few years. Further, the Company did not move work, they opened a new location to provide additional capacity. They made a logical business decision to reduce complete disruption in the case of a strike in the Puget Sound region.
The 1965 case cited does sound like a case on point, since apparently there was moved.Posted by Tom Hellene on 2011-05-16 18:28:22

I see this ruling as a win for Labor, especially since the company I work for, GE, just bought a plant in that third world country, Texas, to make the same product we already make in Pennsylvania. We have a National Contract coming up, and this ruling takes some wind out of the sails of GE, if the intention was to use this plant as a threat.
I have been telling all my fellow Members about this ruling, and what it may mean to us. I hope we can get the company to be fair, but they frequently play dirty, and so I may be walking a picketline this summer and fall and winter, for One Day Longer than the company is willing to lose production.Posted by Mark Haller on 2011-05-16 16:45:55

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